Lawrence Lek - Farsight Freeport Exhibition at HeK

HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Lawrence Lek in Switzerland. London-based artist Lawrence Lek produces immersive virtual worlds and video essays with computer-generated animation, video games and electronic soundtracks.

Lek's works are often presented within complex installations, mimicking the architectural environment of the virtual worlds that he creates. Delving into the interplay between politics, technology and cultural production, Lek’s narratives contemplate the future of our society, in which artificial intelligence is implemented across all industrial and economic sectors, and the automation of labour is complete.

For his exhibition in Switzerland, Lawrence Lek imagines a future retrospective of his work as presented by Farsight Corporation, his technology start-up dedicated to innovation in the creative industries. First conceived as the corporate nemesis in his films Geomancer and AIDOL – both set in the year 2065 – Lek established Farsight in 2018 as a real-life production studio to blur the line between fiction and reality. Since then, he has used the start-up as a nonhuman alter ego, with its relentless drive for growth embodying the principles described in his video essay Sinofuturism (1839-2046) (2016, 60m). Under automated capitalism, artistic creativity is no longer governed by humanist principles but is forced to evolve into a new form, one that reveals the underlying conditions of its production.

In this new site-specific installation at HeK, Lawrence Lek has commissioned Farsight to build an architectural prototype inspired by the former function of the HeK building and the surrounding area of Freilager-Platz, a former freeport, a port area where goods are unloaded, stored, and shipped without payment of customs duties. Farsight has transformed HeK’s exhibition space into a storage and viewing centre for digital artworks, separating the gallery into a 'served' zone for the audience and a 'servant' zone for hardware and software. The interior obeys the functional requirements for the processes that operate in it, while the works on display depict a society that has itself been reorganized by intelligent systems. Invited to enter this unfamiliar zone, the audience slowly gains access to Lek’s oeuvre, assembled together as historical artefacts to be categorised and maintained.

Curators: Sabine Himmelsbach and Boris Magrini

Artist talk: Wednesday, 04.09.2019, 6pm, opening: from 7pm

Exhibition: 5 September - 10 November 2019

Where: House of Electronic Arts Basel, Freilager-Platz 9, 4142 Münchenstein / Basel 

Admission: 9 / 6 CHF (red.)